'I Interviewed My Love-Expert Wife On Relationships And Here's What I Learnt'

I’m married to a relationship expert and everyone thinks we have the perfect relationship. That we’re ‘lucky’ to be so solid. Truth is, it’s not luck at all. It’s work. It’s messy and yes, sometimes there’s tears, but yeah, it’s pretty damn amazing too.

As a journalist, I’ve been able to interview a broad variety of people from all professions. So when the opportunity came to interview my wife, relationship expert and host of the podcast ‘Life and Relationships with Megan Luscombe,’ call me biased but I knew this would get interesting.

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She’s worked with singles and couple on not just their romantic relationships but the relationships they have with the friends, family and even themselves. She’s seen a lot of different dynamics and a huge variety of situations, but fundamentally most of them will come down to some variant of the same few concerns.

So when I asked her to tell me three things that make a great relationship, here’s what she told me.

Gwen and Megan at their wedding. Image: White Lane StudiosSource:Whimn

Expectation

“People have an unrealistic expectation of what a ‘perfect’ relationship looks like,” she says. “It comes from years of watching bad romantic comedies, looking at #couplegoals on social media and tricking ourselves into believing that it’s going to be butterflies in the stomach and swooning every single time we see them. We’ve been sucked into some idea that if it’s not ‘perfect’ and we don’t swoon, the spark must be gone and it’s not love anymore and we start believing there’s something wrong with the relationship.”

But Megan says that’s where love actually starts.

“The butterflies and giddiness you feel for the honeymoon period of your relationship is lust, and it’s meant to get you in the door. But lust fades, because let’s face it, there’s nothing sexy about taking out the rubbish or cleaning up after a sick child. And lust, particularly after you’ve been together for a while, is exhausting. Remember when you first started dating and you probably text each other a million times a day, stayed up until the early hours of the morning completely besotted with each other? Imagine keeping that up with a career, family and general life on top of that! Choosing to love your partner every day, even when it doesn’t come easily, that’s love.”

It can't be Allie and Noah early days forever. Image: The NotebookSource:Whimn

Communication

Yes it’s really true. Talking helps. And not talking can be the number one killer of a relationship, she says.

“I’ve lost count how many times I’ve worked with a client who says to me something along the lines of ‘But my partner should just know…’ Nobody is a mind reader. If you need something in y our relationship, you need to communicate. Assuming they ‘should just know’ is a dangerous assumption,” she says.

Another relationship killer, Megan adds, is stonewalling.

“Basically, it’s the good old-fashioned silent treatment,” she says. Someone gets angry or upset and punishes the other by ignoring them. But what happens is this doesn’t resolve a problem when it’s small and these little annoyances build up into big resentments, blowing up into big arguments that could have easily been avoided.”

She also adds that stonewalling includes walking off in an argument. “It’s a common behaviour for a person, when they’re angry or frustrated or they’re trying to avoid getting upset to just storm out or walk off. Trouble is, is just adds a big bucket of fuel to the fire and doesn’t help anyone.”

Her suggestion? “When you feel like you’re frustrated or angry or the conversation just isn’t going anywhere, it’s completely ok to say to the other person, ‘I just need a few minutes to clear my head or an hour to think about it.’ Ask if you can take a break and come back to it. You’ll be surprised at how much of a difference taking a 20-minute break can let you clear your thoughts and come back with the desire to fix the problem rather than ‘be right’.”

There's nothing more unhealthy than the silent treatment. Image: The BreakupSource:Whimn

Independence

This is a particularly interesting one as both myself and Megan work from home. So yes, it’s often a very real situation where we are around each other 24/7. And yes, sometimes it means we can run out of things to talk about because sometimes there’s nothing to talk about because the other person was there.

We learned early the importance of doing things separately sometimes, and that means going out with different groups of friends on a Friday night. Sure, sometimes our friends ask where the other one is and sometimes they give a baffled look when one of says ‘They’re doing something else tonight.’ But it means that when we get home, we have stuff to talk about. I means I don’t get dragged to the live music shows she loves from bands I’ve never heard of and she doesn’t have to pretend she’s having a great time at an art museum. Everybody wins.

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“Couples who live in each other’s pockets suffocate. It’s important to have individual interests and goals outside your relationship,” Megan says. “But independence shouldn’t take away from being a team. Having different interests is great and allows for breathing room and personal growth. But ultimately you need to want the same things, have similar goals and shared values. This ensures the relationship keeps growing and moving forward.”

What it all comes down to, she says, is knowing “there is no such thing as the ‘perfect’ relationship. It’s simply working together to set a structure that works perfectly for both of you.”